Sunday, 1 May 2016

This
is one of those rare doorstop size books – it's truly epic in its scope, how
much it has to get across, truly minute in its well-researched detail, truly believable
in its characters and their situations, mind sets, feelings…its taken me over two months to read it, till I was fed up of reading it, but unable to stop because
it was so excruciatingly well-written, well-done, educational as well as being
an amazing story.There’s so many books
*like this* out there – great tub thumping stories, but they descend into
melodrama – this one does not, it holds onto itself and its characters and it
tells of all the many parts of India, as seen by us, as we are seen by the
inhabitants, and as we all misunderstand each other.

It would be so easy to mistake this book for one of those others, lush, rich
people having dramas played out against exotic backgrounds.This one was so much more.It was people of all economic groupings, for
a start, and it wasn’t just us, it was the Indians, shown in so many different
ways.Everyone commented on everyone
else, rightly, wrongly.I understood so
much more about the cultures of us in the ‘20s, off on ‘the fishing fleet’ to
find husbands; and of what India was like at the time – Gandhi and times
changing, us changing [or not in the case of some], the Indians changing
towards us, in so many ways large and small.There is so much detailed historical analysis and research clearly done
in the writing of this book, and all doled out during the story, so that its so
much easier to understand this complicated period, and from so many different
points of view.

Characters are wonderful – Viva, the bluestocking author, who wants to learn
all about India and be a writer – her road is rough, and all her mysteries come
to haunt her until she is healed at the end.Rose who comes to India for the equivalent of an arranged marriage,
neither she nor her prospective husband Jack truly understanding that their
lives before and after marriage will be utterly different; there was no getting
to know each other, no blending…they cut each other’s lives in half and bled
through the book until a sort of truce was reached, unhappy but its where they’re
left.Tor, who is desperate to get away
from her controlling mother, and stay in India after accompanying Rose
out.She is full of life and enthusiasm
and ends up happy, for which I am so glad, with the wonderful boyish Toby, who
understood so much – there’s a very affecting story about a small bird he tells.

The subsidiary characters are legion – all the children, of all creeds, at the orphanage,
especially Talika. Pundit, and Ci Ci – two sad sides of us in India: a faithful
and kindly servant mistreated by a so spoilt bitch.Mr Aziz Anwar and his malicious confusion, so
understandable.Daisy and Miss Wagstaff,
older woman who have immense bearing on the plot at the beginning and end.Frank, Viva’s eventual husband, a character
who changes and changes as we get to know him; Nigel, who sung on the boat over
and recited poetry but then later kills himself during the monsoon season.William, a character of poisonous fact and harm to a vulnerable young girl. And the character of Guy Glover, the book’s
ghost, who has so much impact on everyone’s story but at the end disappears, a
no hope loose end, doomed to be killed in a foreign war at some point, his schizophrenia only just coming to be understood, and then ignored.

Then there’s all I learned here: about Indian ragas, “sacred music used to
greet dawn and sunset, summer, spirits and fire” (p.86); the Awali Crisis
(p.126) – constant hints in the book, stirrings of the traumas to come; a poem
called ‘Ithaka’ by Cavafy (pp.130-131); Urdu poets – Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib…and
these are just the things I remembered to jot down.There’s loads of incidental, perfectly
unintrusive richness adding facts in here.The story winds round, all inclusive, all senses stimulated, thought
provoking in its conversation, emotionally involving in its characters.